The Climax would be more aptly named The Anti-Climax. It marked Boris Karloff's return to movies after three years on Broadway and touring in Arsenic and Old Lace. His name alone led many to believe The Climax would be a grand, shivering horror fest, especially as it would be Karloff's first color film. Instead, The Climax is a sad tale of an elderly doctor who has a thing about a singer he strangled ten years previously. For some, it might have promised a delightful Technicolor movie of Viennese operetta and Hollywood soubrettes. Instead, it's a weak re-make of The Phantom of the Opera, without the Phantom, which was released the year before. At the very least, ticket buyers would have expected, based on the lavish sets and art design, all in Technicolor, a passionate story of behind-the-scenes Old Vienna, complete with everyone wearing evening dress or gilt-braid uniforms with red breeches, with gas lights and wet cobblestones, with jealous prima donnas, excerpts from operettas and dancers in pastel tutus. We get the tutus, all right, but the lavishness is from the Minnelli school of garish over-kill. More than anything else, we get a story of aged obsession, hypnotism and throat spray that is as flavorless and stale as a slice of month-old Sachertorte.
Dr. Friedrich Hohner (Boris Karloff), an aging and dignified doctor, serves the medical needs of the operetta singers at Vienna's Theatre Royal. Count Seebruck (Thomas Gomez) runs the theater and the opera company with firmness and humor. One day the doctor chances upon an audition Seebruck is giving to a young student, Angela Klatt (Susannah Foster). She has a marvelous voice, and Seebruck immediately gives her a role in an upcoming production. Hohner is horrified. Angela sounds just like the great singer, Marcellina, who disappeared without a trace ten years ago. We have already learned in flashback at the start of the movie that Hohner loved Marcellina obsessively, and blamed her refusal of his love on her ambition...caused by her extraordinary voice. Hohner solved that problem by silencing the voice. An unfortunate by-product of his action was the dead body of Marcellina. And now it appears that the same voice will star again at the the Theatre Royal. For the rest of the movie we have Angela being pulled and pushed between Hohner, determined that Marcellina's voice will never be heard again, and the young man and fellow student who loves Angela, Franz Munzer (Turhan Bey), who is determined Angela will sing and be a great success. Lurking around the doctor's lavishly decorated medical office and home is his assistant and housekeeper, Luise (Gale Sondergaard). Luise is playing some game of her own, but what could it be? Could it have something to do with the steel, locked door at the top of the stairs in Hohner's home, a door which leads to a room we dread to see what it might contain?
What makes a movie dull? The Phantom of the Opera the year before also starred Susannah Foster. It was a Technicolor knock-out of a movie, and featured a fine performance by Claude Raines, all the behind-the-scenes stuff you could want, an amusing light comedy performance from Nelson Eddy, aided by his rival for Foster's affection, Edgar Barrier. The sets were lavish, including some of the creepiest below-ground scenes ever filmed. It is no classic, but it isn't dull. The Climax uses the same sets, same story line and has a fine actor as the main threat. But there it ends. The story is too familiar and drags on and on. Inexplicably, Karloff is under-utilized. When Karloff says in that deep, sincere voice of his, "I've come to help you, my dear," we hope things will pick up. They don't.
Dr. Friedrich Hohner (Boris Karloff), an aging and dignified doctor, serves the medical needs of the operetta singers at Vienna's Theatre Royal. Count Seebruck (Thomas Gomez) runs the theater and the opera company with firmness and humor. One day the doctor chances upon an audition Seebruck is giving to a young student, Angela Klatt (Susannah Foster). She has a marvelous voice, and Seebruck immediately gives her a role in an upcoming production. Hohner is horrified. Angela sounds just like the great singer, Marcellina, who disappeared without a trace ten years ago. We have already learned in flashback at the start of the movie that Hohner loved Marcellina obsessively, and blamed her refusal of his love on her ambition...caused by her extraordinary voice. Hohner solved that problem by silencing the voice. An unfortunate by-product of his action was the dead body of Marcellina. And now it appears that the same voice will star again at the the Theatre Royal. For the rest of the movie we have Angela being pulled and pushed between Hohner, determined that Marcellina's voice will never be heard again, and the young man and fellow student who loves Angela, Franz Munzer (Turhan Bey), who is determined Angela will sing and be a great success. Lurking around the doctor's lavishly decorated medical office and home is his assistant and housekeeper, Luise (Gale Sondergaard). Luise is playing some game of her own, but what could it be? Could it have something to do with the steel, locked door at the top of the stairs in Hohner's home, a door which leads to a room we dread to see what it might contain?
What makes a movie dull? The Phantom of the Opera the year before also starred Susannah Foster. It was a Technicolor knock-out of a movie, and featured a fine performance by Claude Raines, all the behind-the-scenes stuff you could want, an amusing light comedy performance from Nelson Eddy, aided by his rival for Foster's affection, Edgar Barrier. The sets were lavish, including some of the creepiest below-ground scenes ever filmed. It is no classic, but it isn't dull. The Climax uses the same sets, same story line and has a fine actor as the main threat. But there it ends. The story is too familiar and drags on and on. Inexplicably, Karloff is under-utilized. When Karloff says in that deep, sincere voice of his, "I've come to help you, my dear," we hope things will pick up. They don't.